Eagles look ready to start their season now

But they may have arrived too late to save it

PHILADELPHIA — Watching how the Philadelphia Eagles pulled together vs. Dallas Sunday night, Washington two weeks earlier and the second half of the Buffalo game a week before that, it's not hard to conclude that they're now where they thought they'd be going into the season had they not been locked out all summer.

Only time will tell if this theory is correct, but Eagles fans have every reason to believe it until proved otherwise.

After the team's second straight first-round playoff exit under coach Andy Reid, who had never been one-and-done in the postseason before, Reid knew last January that he had to make bold changes regardless of the pending labor stoppage, which he and president Joe Banner and general manager Howie Roseman knew darn well was almost certain to happen.

The changes the team proceeded to make over the next six months have been chronicled repeatedly and far too excessively. Yet it's worth summarizing again here to pound the point home.

What Reid did was bring in new coaches, new techniques on both sides of the line of scrimmage and so many more new players than usual together all at one time. He couldn't be worried about a potential NFL lockout, which wound up forcing the cancellation of all offseason organized team activities that they needed more than any other supposed contender to get ready for training camp.

So when they arrived at Lehigh University in August, they were basically still in May from a developmental standpoint. Likewise, when they started their season in September, they were still in late July, as if they were just starting training camp.

Only the games they've played since, most of them losses, have enabled them to get to where they are now.

Think about it.

The Eagles' most glaring problem on offense has been turnovers, caused by a variety of factors including confusion on protection calls, tipped passes, lack of concentration, even lack of conditioning. On defense, it's been an inordinate amount of huge, game-changing plays, especially in the fourth quarter.

These are the kinds of things they've been accustomed to cleaning up in training camp each year, but only after arriving with at least a basic grasp of the playbook and having practiced numerous times earlier in the summer and spring.

All of that changed this season, when the rookies couldn't even get their hands on the playbook until reporting to camp, much less go through the plays on the field and get critical feedback from their coaches.

No matter how much they tried, they could not accelerate the process, especially with rules in the new collective bargaining agreement that limit just how much players can even be on the field at practice each day. In fact, the rules actually worked to slow their development.

This was the backdrop against which the Eagles opened their season. And when the St. Louis Rams scored that first day on a 47-yard run on their first play from scrimmage, it was a sign of things to come, even though the Eagles would rebound to get a win in that game.

Obviously they didn't get their second win until more than a month later, as they worked through the fine-tuning details they couldn't get to in training camp. This was because they were too busy integrating seven new defensive starters (now six) into a new system and getting an offensive line that was rebuilt on the fly (with two rookie starters) on the same page with a new position coach who radically changed the blocking technique that even the veteran players found to be different.

Hopping ... wide nine ... jump sets — all of these tweaks were new to the Eagles this year, one in which they could least afford a labor stoppage that could ultimately prove to derail the Super Bowl hopes of a team most people would agree now is talented enough and coached well enough to get there.

A purely unscientific poll of the players and coaches over the last two days reveals that they don't even want to think about what could have been — a sure sign they understand they should be owners of not just the best record in the NFC East, but the entire NFC, instead of sitting at 3-4 with basically no more margin for error and too many critical games remaining.

"I'm not much on imagining things," Reid said. "The important thing is that you continue to improve each week. We have plenty of room still to improve, and we have to make sure we do that. We can enjoy this one, but we have to get on with [preparing for] the [Chicago] Bears."

"I don't like to make excuses," center Jason Kelce added. "But put it this way: it definitely wouldn't have hurt us to have offseason minicamps, especially with all the new parts — me being a rookie, [right guard] Danny [Watkins] being a rookie.

"We don't like to point fingers at things when we've been screwing up, but I think we've gotten better each and every week, and I think that's important."

For the Eagles, it comes down to one question: Was the damage they sustained early in their schedule too much for them to withstand the inevitable damage that they'll absorb later?

The answer will be determined by luck, something they haven't had a whole lot of lately but will need to overcome their 1-4 start, because they aren't good enough to run the table, and the Cowboys and New York Giants aren't bad enough to fold.

Looks like the Redskins already have, but maybe even they stay in it with their defense.

Point is, if you root for the Eagles, keep your fingers crossed, because all that talent playing so well together now and presumably the rest of the way probably won't be enough.